it's never over.

1/7

The books are done. Every last page has been folded over, creased, and read. After days of waking up to the sun dancing on my walls and the stars in the sky, my day always looking up to possibilities rather than down to cages, the books are done. Now I wake up to darkness, those stars are gone. I'm no longer excited, but exhausted. The fantasy has ended, and to say that I'm back where I started would be wrong, because I was at least hopeful when I started. The only thing I can do now is wait and re-read those creased pages again, this time more slowly hoping that my eyes will catch something, something promising, something that I missed, something that will pull me from this emptiness. The books are over.

1/8

Ever since that last page was turned I've been having dreams. My mind is blank, nothing is going on, I don't see anything but darkness, and then my voice appears, narrating a continuation of the stories I just finished reading. I hear the characters voices in my head talking back and forth, but there are only words, no pictures, it's a blank canvas hiding in the corner of a room, unused. I keep telling the story, the plot thickens, something happens, it's almost too much to handle, then I wake up, and I don't remember anything. I'm dreaming up a book that doesn't exist. It's what I want to happen if the stories kept being told, but since they don't yet exist, I'm writing them down, with invisible ink on a blank piece of paper. I'm exhausted and want to sleep but I'm afraid that since I've recognized my dreams, they wont come back to me. I don't know if i'm talking in my sleep, or what exactly prompts me to wake up, or why I can remember nothing when I wake. To say that these books have taken over my life would be severely understated. They're a part of me now, they're in my soul. They don't want to escape, they just lay on my insides soaking further into my guts. Even though it's only been a week or two, it's hard to imagine life before these books rested in my hands. I'm not sure when it will end, or even if it will. I'm lucky. Lucky to have found something that attatched to my hip, dug itself in, and helped piece some of it together. Even if Edward never shows up, I can take comfort in the fact that Edward does exist...somewhere. I'm Bella in my own way, and there will always be a Jacob at my side, it will never be that kind of love, but he will always be there. I can't give up. Not now.